Page 57 of Twins For My Bestie's Brother

We stare at each other. I wait for him to make a move. Comeon. We’ve literally had sex and other than a kiss on his cheek at the beginning of the night, not a single smooch. We’re under the stars, the bay is lapping at the shore, and it’s a perfect milieu.

And . . . nothing.

I break eye contact first. “Great, I guess we should . . . keep walking.” I start to go.

“Wait a second—” Jackson captures my hand in his and pulls me back toward him hard enough that I land against his chest. He locks his arms around me, keeping me pressed to him. Again, our eyes lock. “I want to kiss you.”

“Yeah, and I want you to kiss me, but you’re not doing the wholekissingthing, Jackson!” I reply playfully.

Jackson shakes his head. “I just keep thinking about what would have happened if we’d done this fourteen years ago. You know.”

I run my hands up his arms to his shoulders. “You mean . . . if things would have worked out or . . . ”

“Yeah, I wonder.”

I smile. “I don’t know.”

“At least if we had done this fourteen years ago, I’d be justified in being as nervous as I am.”

“You’re nervous?” I ask.

Jackson tries to smile. “Isn’t it obvious?”

It is. “I’m nervous too.”

We linger there, looking at each other in the moonlight saying nothing and everything at once. The truth is, we weren’t ready back then. For us. Because what’s happening here feels so big. So limitless. I’m scared I’ll never want to let go.

I push myself onto my toes, so our lips are close. “You said you wanted to kiss me,” I whisper.

Jackson nods. “I did.” His words paint my mouth, and a moment later, he kisses me.

We don’t have to put on a show for anyone. And we aren’t desperate like the other night when everything exploded. No.Expanded.

For the first time, it’s just Jackson and Lily.

Jackson tilts his head to the side, parting our mouths. His nose brushes up against mine, bumping up against the small stud. “How was that?”

“Better than what you would have done when you were sixteen,” I reply.

He laughs. “I guess there are some upsides to being patient.”

We finish up our walk and decide to head to a local bar for a drink and some quiet conversation since it is not the night, but this feeling, that is young.

We sit at the bar, side by side, our stools as close as possible so we don’t have to be apart.

The bartender, a woman who must be in her early twenties, says as she passes the drinks across the bar, “I’ve seen you two around town. You’resocute together.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Jackson says, resting his arm on the back of my seat.

“Like the duality. Clean cut and wild child. Obsessed,” she says, before flitting over to some needy patron at the end of the bar.

Jackson licks his lower lip. “Huh. Never been called a wild child before, but—”

I burst with laughter and swipe my beer off the bar. “You know who the wild child is in this—“Don’t say relationship. “Dynamic.”

Jackson smiles, eyelids lowered as I settle back into his arm. “I didn’t want toassume.”

After a sip of my beer, I wonder aloud, “Do you think it’s too much of a . . . duality?”

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